I’m not sure what X Y and Z are in your example.
Because the situations of a pregnant woman and a fetus and a woman and an already-birthed baby are not analogous in any way relevent to the discussion. I mean, let’s look at the specific point you’re addressing - that people are saying it doesn’t matter if the baby is consdered a person or not: the woman’s right to her body wins. You’re trying to demonstrate that we actually don’t think that a woman has rights over her body - but to accomplish this, you have to completely and dare-I-say deliberately misunderstand what is meant by “control over her own body”.
If you wanted your analogy not to be crap, you’d physically plug the baby into the woman’s body as a life-support system, the way we did the 80-year-old man. But then you wouldn’t get the answer you want, so you had to switch to a non-analagous situation instead. Simple fact is, many of us see a rather important difference between directly using someone’s organs, and requiring them to fill you a bottle.
This is the aprt of the post I was hoping people would address:
“how much greater is the burden of an induced delivery that we say"fuck it, lets just kill it”"
Since we are spinning hypotheticals. What if a lactating woman was trapped in a cabin with tons of hard tack and a enemy soldier who was paralyzed and his teeth have been pulled out (i.e., he can’t eat any of the food)? Is she required to breatfeed him?
And bleeding to death is a natural consequence of being so stupid as to ride a motorcylce. (Not all instance of motorcycle-riding result in accidents, sure - but not all instances of sex result in pregnancy either.) I assume that in the interest of consistency, you advocate making it illegal for any medical personel to interfere with an injured person suffering any natural consequences of their initial choice to ride a motorcycle.
I never understood this line of reasoning, myself. Why must “the consequences” be limited to carrying the pregnancy to term? Can’t “the consequences” include having to undergo an abortion?
I mean, if you drive recklessly, “the consequences” might involve your car being damaged. You can deal with “the consequences” by having to drive a beat-up car around, or you can deal with “the consequences” by having your car repaired. Both options have their drawbacks, but I don’t see why only one might be a valid response to the situation.
Uterusess aren’t just carrying spaces for feti. Feti have to take (steal) nourishment from the woman’s body in order to grow. The unfertilized egg that began the fetus was created by the women’s body. So yes, the fetus is a cannibalistic organ stealer if the mother did not consent to its creation or gestation.
Yes, I’m quoting myself, but simply for continuity:
Concerning the argument that nobody would blink an eye at removing a cancerous growth, it should be pointed out that, on the question of personhood, a cancerous growth has zero potential of personhood, whereas a zygote has a 100% chance of personhood until it “proves” it is biologically incapable of personhood due to injury or defect.
It is this potential of personhood which I feel trumps any subsequent choices after the initial choice is made to engage in procreation (barring the exceptions I have already stated). Once procreation has occured, who are you to deny the potential personhood simply because you can’t be inconvenienced? If you made the choice to procreate, then you are responsible for the consequences (and this is true of men, too).
If it helps you sleep at night, 20 million abortions take place every year in countries where abortion is illegal and 219 women die every day from unsafe abortions (some may even take place in back alleys). Plus ça change…
Cite please.
Guttmacher says there are 1000 third term abortions every year, third term is more or less the point of viability these days.
Show me some proof that those thousand abortions are all or even mostly cases of non-elective abortions that could not be induced.
I looked for it and couldn’t find it, perhaps you will have mroe luck.
I am not familiar with the term reverse slippery slope.
Are you seriously trying to say that my argument boils down to “you wouldn’t kill a ten year old so using a condom is a bad thing”?
Potential is of no consequence. I am potentially your employer, at some point in the future: treat me with deference now. That pile of bricks is potentially a building: go live in it. That existing building is potentially a historic landmark: put a plaque on it now. And that baby is potentially an adult: give it beer in it’s bottle.
Did you bother reading teh rest of the post or are you going to Sherrod me?
You’re not talking about a fetus, you’re talking about a baby. At that point you’re dealing with an actual person, not a being of debatable personhood. You’re also comparing breastfeeding to pregnancy. Breast feeding generally doesn’t cause a variety of health problems, and pregnancy sure as hell can. Do you think you can make a serious argument about abortion and take pregnancy out of the equation entirely?
Would you mind providing a cite that most of them are elective? I didn’t see that earlier in the thread. I saw you posted a cite about abortions after the 16th week, but that’s not the third trimester. His point was that the hypothetical is absurd, and he’s right. He’s also correct that pro-lifers generally focus on restricting the types of abortion that are least common and most likely to be medically necessary. Logically they should focus on criminalizing abortion before the third trimester - maybe earlier - but I never hear about them doing that. Why? Because they would lose. They have more success stirring up shit about partial birth abortions and extremely rare third-trimester abortions.
“A lot” doesn’t mean much of anything.
It’s a fetus starting at about eight weeks.
Not true. The woman’s body reacts to the presence of the fetus by changing hormone levels in order to properly nourish the fetus without nutritive detriment to the female “host.” A fetus is not, in the strictest sense, a “parasitic organism,” and to claim such disregards the finer scientific nuances of the definition of parasitism (which is a bit more in depth than what you find in a dictionary entry for “parasite”). A healthy pregnancy does not “injure” the woman, though it is inconvenient, and presents some permanent changes to the woman’s body. Change, however, does not equal “injury.”
In the event that the female “host” is unable to properly nourish the fetus, the fetus typically “self-aborts,” rather than continuing to be a detriment. This is one of the reasons caloric intake instinctively increases for the woman, and why pre-natal vitamins are encouraged, though not always necessary.
I seem to recall that your Guttmacher numbers were from second trimester. Weren’t they?
Yes, with very little hyperbole (the ten-year-old is all yours). You are pretending that rules that apply at one age necessarily make some kind of difference to how rules should be applied in different circumstances at a different age. You might as well argue that because in 200 years that ten-year-old will be nothing but bones, he should be cremated now.
I’m not “trying to demonstrate that [you] actually don’t think that a woman has rights over her body”. I’m trying to demonstrate that people who think this is an absolute right are wrong, and that society sometimes overrides this right to our body if the lives of other people are at stake.
If we agree that society sometimes overrides this right to our body if the lives of other people are at stake, then the personhood of the fetus does become important (because once it attains personhood, it is a person whose life is at stake), which is in contrast to what DianaG et al have been saying, that is, that their right to control their body makes the personhood or not of the fetus irrelevant.
Thanks for the suggestion to “improve” my analogy, but it’s fine as is. In fact, your modification would make it crap.
If you read the scenario again, you’ll see that I don’t mention “filling a bottle”, but instead the woman has to breastfeed the baby (no baby food or formula around).
She has to use her body, and provide nutrients from her body, to keep another person alive. Just like what happens when a fetus becomes viable and attains personhood.
And this is a perfect example of my primary reason for disliking abortion: it cheapens human life to the point that someone will actually make the comparison of an unborn baby (fetus, zygote, whatever) to a pile of bricks. If you can’t see the difference, you are, in my opinion, beyond help.
Sorry if I mislead you. I thought I was being clear that this was 16th week. I couldn’t find anything directly dealing with 24+ weeks. If you have anything, please share. 16th week is considered late term abortion by at least the folks who put together this survey. i am not sure who Guttmacher is, maybe they have an agenda.
This CBS report says 24 weeks but notes another study that said 28 weeks. So does that mean you would have a problem with abortions past the 28th week?
I quoted where Der Trihs saying that he doesn’t think a newborn baby is a person and “not being a person” was part of the rationale for why it was Ok to abort them. Maybe I am making a leap of logic but if you say, we can kill a fetus because it is not a person and then you say I don’t think newborns are persons, then wtf is the implication?
Its about the only argument I’ve encountered in this thread.
I thought I was making a point by making an extreme example.
Actually, this is a good question, and the other person doesn’t even need to be an enemy soldier.
A woman is trapped in a cabin (e.g. snowed in) with another grown adult, and the only way for the other grown adult to stay alive is if this woman breastfeeds him/her (he is injured and can’t chew).
She refuses to do so and the person dies.
I’m not sure what the law says about this and if the law would have something different to say if the other person was a baby you just gave birth to.
Except, it still doesn’t matter. Full adult sentient people need kidneys, yet we do not require you to donate parts of your body for their benefit. We don’t even make you donate blood! Their personhood doesn’t make a whit of difference, when we start talking about actual rights over a person’s own body.
It’s complete crap already.
He says, as he cheapens actual children to the point of comparing them to a zygote.